


catharsis

by momobamiyuki



Category: Legacies (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, a character study on hope, and how her relationship with lizzie can help her, and how she expresses all she feels through art, give it a try if u want deep things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-23 16:40:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21084509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/momobamiyuki/pseuds/momobamiyuki
Summary: catharsis : refers to the purification and purgation of emotions—particularly pity and fear. usually through art or any extreme change in emotion that results in renewal and restoration.aka: hope and her life and love through art





	catharsis

**Author's Note:**

> tried this new style and thought why the hell not write it? i hope u enjoy it and love it and pls leave comments and love to show that!!! ily so much and enjoy!!

catharsis.

refers to the purification and purgation of emotions—particularly pity and fear. usually through art or any extreme change in emotion that results in renewal and restoration.

hope thinks of that as she paints. 

her life has been full of trials that bring her to face a new hope mikaelson, a new self. constantly morphing, constantly evolving. it started with her mother, who made her try to become the person she wanted hope to be. 

so she tries, accepts the hollow inside her, and her family is back together again.

long, slow sweeps of her brush. she coats the white canvas black and she thinks about what happened afterwards. 

her father sacrifices himself for her. her uncle chooses to die along with him.

hope leaves. takes one last look at new orleans and flees with dark, broken, teary eyes towards mystic falls.

she changes again after that. changes the same way she switches her brushes, changes and becomes rougher, more distant, stumbling from a brush for details to a brush made to cover big spaces the same way she covers her empty heart.

cleansing herself isn’t as easy or as simple as the world makes it seem. she works harder, trains with alaric more and lets herself slowly grate forward against the backslide of her past.

hope studies magic and feels the power tingling in her fingertips, the same way she feels the freedom in her bones when she turns into a wolf, the pride simmering in her chest when she saves people with her blood. there is a beauty in being three things in one.

there is beauty in painting over her sins. hope does so in small steps, looks forward and feels her parent’s gaze upon her.

or was it her own shadow doing the judging?

another trick of the brush. blue appears before her eyes and it coats her fingers. it’s not quite perfect. she adds white and green and white again. she can never get it exactly right.

to her surprise, there is a single constant in her life. a constant during monsters and landon and malivore and  _ everything _ . 

an anchor, hope calls her. constant as the blue on each of her paintings, a lingering cough that hope wants to be forever sick from.

lizzie saltzman is water. that’s the only way she can describe her. an ocean left unexplored, a shining girl cracking jokes on death row. she creates the same way she destroys: not waiting for permission.

she starts slow. enters hope’s life as the most peaceful storm hope has ever encountered.

it starts with a lie, a rumor, and a fire.

it ends with a confrontation, a truth, and a smile.

it starts again, as all things do.

hope smiles as she continues painting. she trades the brush for a smaller one and starts with the details, the barest touch of white paint showing on the canvas.

it starts with a pageant, with josie’s disappointed face and lizzie’s smile.

a lot of things happen after that. more than hope can count and more than she has time to remember. art is about catharsis, she can only handle so many memories before it turns into a night of thinking and that acrylic aroma that lingers.

lizzie is like water, an ocean, even. filled with big smiles and laughs and pretty eyes and charming narcissism. 

but oceans are dangerous too, just as hope is, just as lizzie is. those are storms hope can handle. lizzie screams and destroys and sets it all free. hope can handle it, touches lizzie’s face with her hands and anchors her in the tossing sea. 

storms make for a skilled sailor. hope can’t say she has seen all that the ocean has in store for her, but she gladly weathers the storms when they come her way.

the black paint has already dried, so has the blue. the white is still being applied. 

hope takes enjoyment in how she does art. it’s a passion to release what magic can’t. it used to be the only thing she knew of her father, a fighter who somehow wielded the brush in the same gentle way he cared for hope.

now it has changed yet again. hope has changed, and her passions change meaning. now it’s more of a way to show what she can’t tell, for her to express how dark and lonely and so utterly empty malivore was without breaking down, without feeling the darkness creeping into her again. 

emma says it’s good to turn awful things into art. lizzie reminds her that no great artist has ever lived without suffering. josie buys her more paint when she goes to town.

it’s nice, creating something from nothing. it helps her move on, and she spreads her cracked heart thin across the canvas when she sees landon with josie. she realizes too late that the painting is too dark, there’s too much shadow where there should be light, and perhaps it mirrors how she feels on the inside.

hope tries with landon again. she kisses him and finds his embrace too different. his lips don’t make her heart flutter in that special way anymore. 

they break whatever they had. landon sees her in the hallways and smiles. hope draws lakes, still and clear and sun-dappled like landon is, and feels like she can smile back.

josie doesn’t get back with him. she doesn’t remember hope either, only knows of hope what a diary tells her. she does smile at hope, leaves an extra cupcake on her lunch table sometimes. 

hope draws a fire, the tendrils frozen in their flickering, and it isn’t scary like fire should be. the red is warm, shows the potential to hurt and yet- yet it warms, protects. she sets it on josie’s bed and leaves before josie can see her. lizzie tells her she hangs it on the wall beside her bed.

her painting is close to being done. the colors flow together, and yet it’s still missing something. hope frowns, lowers her brush and leans back.

raf is different too. he remembers her and he doesn’t. the wolf comes to her easily the moment he sees her. raf stares at her, confused and scared, when she turns him back.

he tries fitting back in. it’s hard, hope sees that but jed helps him. at times she does too, stays by his side during emma’s sessions and hangs out with him and landon. she knows how hard it’s to be back home and to feel as if everything but you has changed.

she lets him keep the ring. he smiles and hope can see emotions she thought he had lost appear in his eyes. she studies late, falls asleep in the library and finds a jacket too big to be hers draped across her shoulders. 

she adds more details, draws a wolf running free, its fur pitch and stark against the rest of the painting, and yet it fits against the pale background. it looks like freedom, a peace hope hasn’t felt in a long time.

lizzie is the last piece of the puzzle. 

lizzie with her snarky comments and gentle hands, who has traveled europe and has tried taming the storms in her. lizzie who finds hope right when she is out of malivore and who remembers her the moment hope lets her siphon.

it feels like magic wasn’t the only thing she took. perhaps she took some of hope’s pain too, her loneliness and fears, what made hope herself, her essence, maybe.

lizzie siphons from her and it feels like coming back home.

her brush flies faster. blue eyes glint and she is glad of her speed, how she changes colors and mixes them without looking.

lizzie is a siphoner. an abomination and a mistake, cursed to not have the thing which makes her a witch, a hole in her heart and soul. she takes, takes from every magical source she can find. lizzie glows red as a burning fire, the painful kind, and hope feels as if she understands that pain.

hope is a tribrid. a miracle and a cosmic mistake, a loophole of three things, a broken trinity, cursed to not have a stable identity. she gives because that’s all she can do, forces out magic and runs as a wolf and gives her blood to save others. hope glows power and lizzie feels as if hope can understand the pain she is in.

_ busy drawing? _

hope smiles, feels arms wrap around her shoulders from behind, blonde hair falling into hers. she is closer to finishing the canvas now.

_ i noticed something today. _

_ feel like sharing? _

but hope yearns to take. yearns to take love and to be filled by it the same way lizzie years to feel full of magic. she yearns and lets herself fall, lets lizzie teach her how it feels to let go.

and lizzie yearns to give. yearns to give her all, to give love the same way hope gives out magic, powerful and strong and  _ warm.  _ she yearns and it’s easy to catch hope, to complete her and to let herself siphon.

_ we’re similar because both of us are different from the rest, aren’t we? _

_ now that’s the way to a girl’s heart, mikaelson. _

her brushes are fast and easy, her hand precise and the picture is soon complete. 

hope smiles, thinks of a lake and fire and running free and oceans. drowning isn’t as enjoyable as swimming. thinks of ocean eyes, not of a deadly curse.

there was a time where she hated blue. when all it represented was death and pain and harsh whispers and everything hope tried her hardest to let go.

_ your instinct is to take, to fill yourself with what you should have. my instinct is to let out, give all this power i have that i shouldn’t.  _

_ and what’s your point? _

hope takes the brush again, coats it blue and feels lizzie’s chin resting upon her head. it keeps her focused. it lets hope dip into that sea of emotions she feels, but not sink.

an anchor. a bond unbroken by centuries-old magic.

_ and yet in love, we’re different. you’re the girl who is ready to give her all, to place her heart in someone’s hand and say ‘take it, it’s yours, i don’t want it’. _

_ is that supposed to be an insult or a compliment? _

a shade of blue darker, a shade of blue hope doesn’t see in her reflection. 

the painting is close to finished, her feelings close to being clear.

it’s a catharsis and no literature class could explain it to her as these few moments do.

_ just an observation. _

hope laughs. 

_ as i was saying. you’re the giver, i’m the opposite. i yearn to take, to feel as if i’m allowed to take, worth giving and staying for. i yearn for love the same way you yearn for magic. _

_ and the painting represents that, i suppose? _

she settles her brush down, stares at the canvas and smiles.

it’s a view. it’s not fully reality but it isn’t a holy view shown to her by the gods either.

it’s home, perhaps. there is a lake, surrounded by the darkness of the night. there’s a fire, burning red and warm and there’s a wolf, running between snow-kissed trees.

_ it’s my catharsis. it’s me realizing i chose this family i have now. _

and far, separated by trees and snow there is an ocean. an ocean in a blue that swims along the sky. the stars shine, the moon’s reflection upon the water feels like a path and less like a reflection. 

it’s not a blue she sees in her nightmares. it’s not a blue she sees in her reflection.

it’s a blue she sees the moment she stares at lizzie and realizes that she wants lizzie to be the one to complete her. that perhaps lizzie  _ is  _ the only one to complete her.

_ someone’s been paying attention in english class. _

hope smiles, turns around and lizzie stands before her. tall, proud, and smiling.

an ocean stares back at her. hope finally accepts that she wants to explore it.

_ do you know the words epiphany and euphoria? _

_ a moment of sudden realization for the first. and the second one is great happiness. _

hope’s hands are cool against lizzie’s cheeks. they leave a smear of blue and white on their touch. it feels as if they are painting her the same way hope painted her life, a mess of colors and art.

_ it usually comes from realizing the truth. both kind of come from after a catharsis. first there is epiphany and after that there is euphoria. _

_ what does that have to do with your catharsis? or are we just studying for a vocabulary test? _

hope doesn’t reply. she smiles and brings her closer and her lips meets lizzie’s.

hope kisses lizzie and thinks of catharsis. thinks of all that has led them there, with lizzie wearing her best clothes and with hope wearing suspenders dirty with paint and kissing each other.

_ it has to do with that because, lizzie saltzman, if painting is my catharsis and realizing the family i have around me is my epiphany, you are my euphoria. _

hope kisses lizzie and she realizes that she has never felt more complete.

(and one hell of a catharsis that is.)

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> tell me more on my twitter @thehopesaltzman


End file.
